Big Sit, Day 66: Breathing In, Breathing Out

"Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in; breathing out, I a know that I am breathing out..."

When Tricycle's 90-day Zen Meditation Challenge, The Big Sit, started sixty-six number of days ago, I had endeavored to ignite a practice of sitting each day for 15 minutes (yes, 5 minutes less than recommended, but far better than the zero I had been putting in previously!). Things have “progressed” in that I have continued to follow through on setting aside fifteen-twenty minutes daily (preferably in the morning, but at night when necessary) and, thus far, have only missed two “appointments” with the chair/pillow.

While there is no real measure of success in practice (at least as I have seen yet), except for the reality that I now look forward to these moments and have tried to develop how and what I do with them.

I began this journey using a method of "counting breathes" (“One”… breathe in… breathe out, “Two”… breathe in… breathe out… and so on until ten), dabbled briefly in a few different “counting approaches,” but of late have settled on using the some techniques suggested in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Breathe, You Are Alive: The Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. (The first of these is at the start of this post.)

In addition to using a few lines of these sutras (aphorisms relating to some aspect of the conduct of life) to focus in lie of simple counting, I have also begun reading a short gatha (one of a group of hymns) priro to beginning in each morning.

The best part is that I have started...